


A Different Kind of Hunger

by mermaiddrunk



Category: Dracula (TV 2013)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 11:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mermaiddrunk/pseuds/mermaiddrunk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been almost four months since Lucy kissed her. Things have happened since then. Grayson is dead, Van Helsing is dead, Jayne Wetherby was very nearly dead, Mina is unengaged and Lucy, well Lucy’s a vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Different Kind of Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly the first in a 'Lucy as a vampire' series. I don't know where I'm going with this, or why I'm shipping this tragic pair, but to quote the classic poet, Miley Cyrus "We can't stop and we won't stop..."

It’s been almost four months since Lucy kissed her.

Things have happened since then. Grayson is dead, Van Helsing is dead, Jayne Wetherby was very nearly dead, Mina is unengaged and Lucy, well Lucy’s a vampire.

How it happened is a long and painful story, one Mina rather wishes she could forget. Except she can’t, because the conclusion to that story now dwells in Van Helsing’s old lab, pacing and snarling and ever hungry.

If Mina had had to guess what Lucy would be like as a vampire, if that insanely improbable question had been posed to her a year ago, she would have used words like strong, decisive, wilful, lustful, loyal. These are words she associated with human Lucy, qualities she would have expected the vampire Lucy to only exaggerate.

 But it is not so.  

Vampire Lucy is quiet.

She broods in the dark.

She does not laugh.

Mina thinks that the absence of that laugh is perhaps the most tragic loss they have suffered.

They do not let her out of the basement. “They” are herself, Jonathan and the Lady Wetherby. The rest of the Order has either had their throats ripped out or quietly faded into obscurity. Lady Wetherby remained out of some twisted loyalty and what Mina suspects is a deep sense of guilt.

When she thinks about Jayne Wetherby, long-limbed and blonde-maned, bedding Alexander Grayson (though she tries not to think of it often), something inside of her clenches with the oddest emotion. A kind of jealousy which belongs to another soul, one which seems intertwined with hers.

Mina makes peace with the fact that her part in the story was inevitable. She makes peace with Ilona and the events that occurred hundreds of years before her birth.

But she also knows she is not Dracula’s bride, not Jonathan’s wife, not anybody’s anything. She is Mina Murray, doctor.

At this moment, she is Mina Murray, wet nurse to a vampire.

The basement smells of rotting mint leaves. The scent of the doctor’s salves and oils remains. It is death and decay. Mina thinks it is the last place Lucy should be.

They cannot let her out. Not after the Renfield incident (poor Mr Renfield) Not until she has learned to control her craving. Without the tutelage of her sire, this is proving more difficult that any of them could have imagined. Lady Wetherby helps, but she has the broken shards of the Order to sweep up and cannot be lavish her energies on the new-born vampire.

So it is up to Mina.

Mina knows that Lucy knows she is coming. She knows Lucy can hear her and smell her long before she sees her.  She knows about Lucy’s strength and speed. She knows all there is to know about Lucy’s ‘condition’. After all they have been through, how could she not?

And yet the sight of her dearest friend, a pale shadow behind the thick, iron bars, meant to hold circus animals and madmen, still rattles her heart in its body shell.

They have tried to make her as comfortable as possible. A laughable notion considering she’s locked up in a cage. It is a big cage, according to Jonathan, who spends little to no time down there, for fear of aggravating the vampire. There is a mattress, thick and fluffy that she barely lies upon. There is a dresser, with a mirror she will never use. Her dresses, fresh and pressed, lie in a heap on the ground and she walks only in her thin, white nightgown, stained with brown splashes that were once bright red. Human Lucy would not have been caught dead so underdressed in public, but vampire Lucy is (un)dead and seems to have lost her sense of modesty along with her soul.

Except she hadn’t lost her soul. Not really. She’s just… evolved into something different, something Mina dare argue may be greater than any of them would admit.

When Mina enters, Lucy is pacing. Her bare feet pad across the cold cement floor. She doesn’t look up as Mina approaches, but her nostrils flare. Scent of blood. Scent of Mina.

“Did, you know,” Lucy’s voice has become both smoother and richer and Mina shivers involuntarily. Lucy’s voice has always had a certain power over her. “-that vampires dream?”

“Really?” Mina sets the bag on the table and the low purr that she’s become accustomed to reverberates through the room. These sounds have become part of Lucy’s language, one that Mina is slowly beginning to learn. “And what do they dream of?”

“Blood.”

Lucy is against the bars before Mina blinks, her pale fingers curl around the rusty iron and she squeezes.

“They dream of the hunger finally being sated. Of the end of this craving.”

Mina turns to face her fully and finds herself captured by those reckless eyes. Stormy and green and so achingly familiar.

“It will happen. In time, you’ll be… free” Mina says, willing herself not to reach for the key around her neck and open the cage. Willing herself not to take Lucy into her arms and warm her cold body. She shakes her head, as if to realign something inside of it.

“Lucy, stop it.”

“Sorry.” The vampire’s fingers uncurl and she takes a step back. Her face is the picture of remorse. “Half the time I barely realise it’s happening.”

“I know,” Mina says softly.

Lucy takes another step back, and then another, until her back is against the cool, stone wall.

Mina picks up the cloth bag, lined with some sort of impermeable gum. The blood inside it sloshes about. She gently sets it down at the front of the cell. “It’s still warm.”

Lucy’s answering smile is thin-lipped and grim. “Thank you.” Her eyes dart down to the bag and then again to Mina. The change in Lucy’s face is subtle, but there. The way her pupils dilate and her skin flushes, the way she swallows in anticipation. “Please?” Mina knows what she is begging for. They have done this before and so she turns, because she will allow Lucy the dignity of guzzling down her meal in private. Her back is barely turned when the sounds of breathless, desperate swallowing invade the musty space. Mina is reminded of a baby, at its mother’s breast.  She closes her eyes and pretends that she isn’t hearing her best friend drink stolen human blood.

Lucy’s gasps slow and eventually stop. “Thank you,” she says again. Mina’s cue to turn back. Self-conscious, Lucy drags the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping away the smear of crimson and with it, all evidence of sin.

“How are you feeling?” The question is absurd and trivial, but Mina asks it anyway.

“Better,” is Lucy’s answer. And she looks it too. There is colour in her cheeks, her hair shines, her skin is radiant. She glows with the dignity of one sired by a vampire as ancient as Dracula. _Beautiful lady_. Is that not what the little ones called her?

It is beauty both terrifying as it is heart breaking, and Mina knows its cost of it all too well.

“I saw Minerva this morning,” Mina begins, for she knows that these moments post-feeding are precious. These are the moments Lucy usually sends her away, and asks for her solitude. These are the moments that Mina selfishly covets. She’s discovered that if she keeps talking, about anything, about stupid little things, Lucy tolerates her presence.

“How is my mother?”

“She’s looking well-rested,” Mina says diplomatically. In truth, Minerva Westenra looked haggard – a mere spectrum of her former self. The death of her only child had aged her terribly.

Lucy’s smile is fragile and barely there and Mina wonders, not for the first time, if Lucy can see through into the tangled labyrinth of her mind and read her innermost thoughts.

Mina takes a careful, deliberate step towards the cage. Lucy takes a careful, deliberate step back.

“Lucy, do you need anything? What I mean is,” Mina exhales loudly. She’s frustrated by herself, by the situation, but those thick iron bars. “Are you comfortable?”

“I’m fine, Mina.”

Mina. It’s always Mina now. No _darling_ and _dear_ , no more _sweet_ and _lovely._ These affectionate prefixes, which would spill out of Lucy’s mouth like syrup, are now dusty and forgotten.

Mina nods once and desperately blinks back tears. This shell of her former friend. Hollowed out and haunted. And if Mina could fill her, she would. If she could pour herself into Lucy and live there, she would. But she cannot and Lucy will not let her. And so, there is this. The bringing of the blood, the drinking of the blood and the meaningless chatter until Lucy begins to pace and asks Mina to leave.

Three months of this and Mina is exhausted.

It’s selfish really, to be hurt and wounded when it is Lucy who has lost so much. It is Lucy who is forever altered. And yet, Mina cannot help but feel as though she too, is profoundly changed. And without Lucy, she is lost. She is alone, and there is no comfort. Not in Jonathan and certainly not in Jayne Wetherby. Not in sleep or medicine. And she is so utterly alone.

“I should go.” Her voice cracks with defeat. “The hospital will be wondering-”

“It’s not your fault, you know.” Lucy looks at her with eyes that know her every secret and Mina comes undone. “You could not have known.”

Mina wants to protest and say, “It is my fault.”

She wants to say, “He did it because of me.”

 She wants to say, “Lucy, I am sorry.”

But to hear those words, the closest Lucy has come to acknowledging Mina’s part in it, the closest she has come to absolving her…  to hear Lucy speak like she actually _sees_ her, destroys Mina and she lets out a teary sob before she can stop herself.

And then she’s crying, tears falling with abandon, her hands on her cheeks as if obscuring her face will somehow hide the shame. She chokes on tears and guilt.

“Mina, hush. Please, do not weep.” Lucy’s words penetrate the fog of misery and Mina attempts to gain composure.

“I’m sorry,” she cries out. “Lucy, I am so, so sorry.” The apology runs deeper than Mina can express.

“Hush, now,” Lucy croons from behind bars. “Mina please,” her own tone, pained and laced with a desperation.

Mina’s breathless sobs soften into whimpers and eventually, with red-rimmed eyes and tear stained cheeks, she meets Lucy’s gaze. “Can you ever forgive me?” She struggles to say the words, terrified of the answer.

But Lucy says, “There is nothing to forgive.” And Mina believes her and for the first time since Lucy clawed her way out of the sour earth, she feels lighter. She takes another step towards the cage and this time, Lucy, who is pressed against the bars, does not step back. She does not move, does not flinch when Mina tentatively reaches out and lays a palm against her cheek.

“You’re warm,” Mina says with some surprise. And Lucy, like a sweet house cat, nuzzles into that palm and sighs.

“After feeding, for a little while, my temperature rises.” Transfixed by the warm, soft skin that feels more real than anything she has touched in the last three months, Mina strokes her thumb over Lucy’s cheek, stopping just at the corner of her red mouth.

The image of Lucy, shut-eyed and content, practically purring against Mina’s palm has her heart racing and she is suddenly faint, as if Lucy has been psychically drawing her of blood. The tragic realisation is that no-one has touched the vampire, not like this, not for weeks.

The metal from the key is cool in Mina’s hand, despite resting against her chest all day. Her fingers trace the hard ridges before she slots it into the ancient lock. The sound causes Lucy’s eyes to flare open – green flames dance around her dilated pupil and she looks to Mina in confusion.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ve just fed,” Mina says, surprised at how steady her voice is, at how rational she sounds. She manages to keep her eyes on Lucy. “You’re not a danger to me at this moment.” She turns the key a fraction, hesitating as Lucy practically flies back against the wall in an effort to move from the bars.

“Mina, no. You cannot do this.” Lucy’s voice is tinged with fear, but also something else, something Mina recognises within herself.

“You will not hurt me.” She says it as though she believes it, as if willing Lucy to believe it too.

“You cannot know that,” Lucy challenges, her gaze now fixed on Mina’s grip around the key. “There are things you don’t understand. Things I haven’t said.”

The hand stills. “What things?” Mina is suddenly breathless, as if the air in the basement had spontaneously thinned.

She shakes her head. Stubborn Lucy. There is comfort in the familiar way she purses her lips. Those red, red lips

“Lucy.” Mina waits a beat. “You can tell me anything. Remember? You used to tell me everything.”

A humourless laugh echoes from Lucy and she knocks her head back against the wall. “Not everything.”

 “Then tell me now.”

The low growl in emanating from Lucy’s pharynx, would, under any other circumstances have fascinated Mina. But she is focused solely on that mouth and how lips part to speak words that should long have been uttered.

“When I dream…” A trembling sigh, “I dream of you.”

Mina swallows down fear and excitement and the other thing, building inside of her that she dare not mention, or even think.

“I always have,” Lucy continues. She doesn’t look at Mina. The mouldy ceiling proves far safer. “But then, I think you knew that.”

“Lucy, I-”

“And then there’s this hunger. This… craving that cannot be sated.”  Lucy finally does look at her and those eyes are searing in their honesty. “But it is not for blood.” The admission hangs heavy between them.  “And I shall go mad for wanting.”

Mina’s fingers slide from the key and her arms hang at her sides, limp in apology and comprehension. The motion is not lost and Lucy’s smile is shaped like sadness.

“So you see, my darling, _dearest_ Mina. You cannot come in, because if you do…” her voice breaks and she shakes her head.

Mina knows. Of course she knows. The kiss, that sweet, potent kiss all those months ago was only a confirmation.  And since then, Mina has felt passion and heartache, terror and despair, but nothing quite like that kiss.

But Mina dared not say anything. Between the death and the blood and the vampirism of it all, she thought such a kiss would be forgotten. She could not look at Lucy, all fangs and glowing eyes and feel anything but guilt and remorse.

Until now.

And so, with trembling fingers, and a pounding heart, Mina turns the key.

**~fin**

 

 

 


End file.
